21 weeks 4 days, a few belly pics!

Well I went yesterday for my check up with my regular Dr. and all is well! I have officially broke even with my weight and I now weigh what I did prior to finding out I was pregnant, (which is 159) so that means I've gained 10 lbs in the last 13 weeks. All though I did think it was more when she read the numbers on the scale, for some reason I was thinking that the last time I was in I weighed 146. I kept thinking "13 lbs in 4 weeks? Really??" Thank goodness Dan was able to tell me "no sweetie, you were 156 last time." LOL! I don't know what I was thinking. Anyways, he said the results from my anatomy scan looked great, and both girls are right on track. I tried again to talk him into letting me do this without an epidural, and again he basically told me no way! It's driving me nuts, but I can see his point. He said my cervix was measuring 35, and that anything above 25 is good. But he did say that if it starts to shorten they are going to make me start slowing down with everything, until then I am free to keep doing what I have been.

I think I said it last time, but I have been feeling the girls moving and kicking lately......AND I LOVE IT!!.....It seriously brings a smile to my face every time I feel one of them moving, and I love the fact that I know which is which! Baby A is definitely more of a mover than Baby B. It's just such a reassuring feeling! I can't wait till Dan and Taylor can feel it too. I think that will be fun for Taylor especially. She is always talking to the babies, it's cute.

And let me just say for the record that I feel hungry constantly, even when I'm full to the max and can't eat anymore! I take the late lunch at work (3pm) and I was hungry as soon as I got here today. I swear it's like lunch can not come soon enough! I'm really ready now. And of course what do I want? Panera of course, LOL!

Oh, while I'm thinking about it I should add up my "belly" pictures, so here they are...

This is at 19 weeks


And this is the most recent one at 21 weeks



I was feeling pretty big, until a friend of mine who is about 5 weeks further than me with a single baby posted pictures of her belly! She was sure to tell me how unfair it was that I was having twins and was smaller than her, but her belly is the cutest belly EVER, it's perfectly round and she is all belly for sure! I told her she seriously looks like she has a basketball under her shirt, and that is not an exaggeration at all!

Well, I guess I should be going for now. I have some work to do and I'm hoping that by keeping busy I will forget about the fact I am so hungry, LOL!

21 week ultrasound

Friday was our "big" ultrasound and it took forever!! I'm actually pretty sure that they forgot about me at one point too, LOL! But it was good to see the girls and see that they are okay, at least they looked okay to me anyways. I have an appointment with my regular Dr tomorrow afternoon so I'm sure he will be able to tell me whether or not everything looked good on their end. I woke up Friday morning and took a shower, thought about shaving my legs and nether regions and then thought "It's just an ultrasound on my belly, I don't need to shave today." All was fine and well up until the point where they said "We have to give you a trans. vaginal ultrasound to check the length of your cervix." I could have DIED! Let's just say I have 4 weeks worth of hair grown out...ugh. LOL! Oh well, I'm sure they have seen worse, at least that is what I have been telling myself, ha ha ha! I did ask the ultrasound tech to tell me where the babies were lying in my belly. I've been felling them move but I couldn't determine of I was only feeling one or both. Baby A is on my left side, head down feet up and Baby B is on my right side head down and feet up. So now I can tell that Baby A is much more active than Baby B is. It's nice to be able to tell which is which now. Here are a couple of the ultrasound pictures...

Baby A...




Baby B...


The tech said that both babies are measuring the same still except that one has a bigger belly and one has longer legs! It's so funny that they are both measuring the same after all these weeks. They are also measuring right on track with my weeks so I'm hoping that is a good sign that they will be good size when they come out and then it will be less time of them having to stay in the hospital. *Fingers crossed!*

Like I said though, I have been feeling the girls moving for about a week and a half now, and their kicks and punches are strong! I love it though, I can't wait till Dan and Taylor can feel it too! I bought the girls their first outfits on Saturday too! They are the cutest little dresses and I told Dan that I would like them to be the outfits we bring them home in. I still have a hard time believing I am actually caring TWO babies right now! It's just so insane! Anyways, here are the dresses I bought...


I have been on this Panera Bread kick for the last couple of weeks. I have literally ate there every work day for lunch for the last week. I think the people who work there think I am crazy. LOL! The cesar salad and broccoli cheddar soup are just so good it seems like the only thing that sounds good when lunch rolls around. MMMM, I've also been experiencing the whole feeling hungry and stuffed at the same time. It's an awful feeling for sure. I didn't even know that feeling was possible but I guess it is. I have a couple of belly pictures to put up here on the computer at home, maybe tomorrow I will get them up. One is from 19 weeks and the other is from this week at 21 weeks, I can see the difference for sure. Well I suppose I should be going for now, I have half an hour before I get to head home, but I'm sure I will be back either tomorrow or Wednesday to give the update of my appointment tomorrow!

Name changes.....again

I swear that just about the time I start to think that I am out of the morning sickness phase, it comes back just to surprise me! I woke up feeling good this morning, actually haven't felt real sick in a while now. Got ready for work, ate a bowl of cereal and that was the end of my feeling good streak! I think the Special K Blueberry must not have set right with me, so I won't be trying to eat that again for awhile.

On a totally unrelated note, I decided that picking out names for your children just seems to get harder and harder with the more you have! Naming Taylor seemed so easy, it just came to us and it flowed. But picking names for these babies I swear I can't decide on a for sure name! Makinsey Lynn is here to stay, Dan picked the name and he loves it and I love it and, well even if I didn't love it I think I would have a hard time making him choose another. I thought I loved Paige Lillian for awhile, until the whole "Page Lillian to the living room" fiasco and the more and more I said it, I realized that it just didn't flow right. I do like the name Paige, but trying to come up with a middle name to go with it was the part that kept throwing me for a loop. I love the idea that all three girls will have a more modern name (Taylor, Makinsey, and Paige) and I liked the idea that they would all have a pretty common middle name (Marie, Lynn, and ???). Lillian didn't fit into the common middle names, Lee didn't seem to fit, Ann would work but it's my mom's middle name and if non of the other kids are being named after someone I didn't want to start now. Elizabeth would have been great, but I've already talked about the hissy fit my sister in law threw so that was out of the question. Sue? Didn't sound right either. Rose? Nope didn't fit. Noelle sounds nice, but again it's my cousin's middle name. After much thought, I decided that the only way around this was to change the first name, so that is what we have done....yet again....LOL! So right now, at the half way point of 20 weeks, the names we have picked are.....

Makinsey Lynn & Brooklyn Rose

And I LOVE them! I'm just hoping that I continue to love them and we don't change them again. I can't believe that I'm 20 weeks already, it seems so insane, but I am sooo super excited about it! We go a week from today for the big anatomy ultrasound and I can't wait, it will be so exciting to go.

So Valentine's day is this weekend, and Dan and I usually don't do much for each other but I think that this year I am going to surprise him and make him a steak dinner. I say it's for him, but really I just have a constant craving for steak, and well, I gotta get it anyway I can...LOL!

It's about time for lunch, so I have to go run some errands and grab some food. I hope everyone has a good weekend and a good Valentines!!

My niece Emily...

I decided that today I would take the time to tell the whole story about my niece, Emily, since I touched on it a little bit yesterday and realized that if anyone was reading it they wouldn't know what I was even talking about.

Now I feel the need to give a little back ground on the situation so that when your reading this you can get the full picture. In 2001-2002, my brother in law and his wife got divorced, and because he had no family in Florida where they were living he loaded up his 3 girls (ages 4, 5, and 6 at the time) and moved to Michigan and lived with Dan and I for about 4 months while he found a place for the 4 of them to live. I've always had this problem with his ex-wife because I honestly don't know how, being a mother to 3 beautiful girls, you could EVER let them move that far from you without putting up a fight to keep them there, or packing up yourself and moving also. My brother in law, Shawn, and the girls lived in Michigan for 6 years, and in that 6 years I think those girls talked to their mom MAYBE 4-6 times a year, usually being on birthdays and holidays, and I think they got to see her about 3 times. When Shawn started dating again and things got serious, Emily, the oldest, was the one who took it the hardest, and she did her fair share to start fights and try to get her dad and his new wife to break up, all with fail. After finding some property and a nice house in North Carolina in 2007, Shawn once again loaded up the family and moved them down there. Again, Emily was the the one who was effected the hardest and eventually she started hanging out with a not so pleasant crowd. At one point her boyfriend called the police and said that my brother in law had threatened him with a gun along with many other complaints. Even though Shawn didn't own a gun, the police still had to make the report and with my brother in law facing legal issues and Emily causing so many problems, he thought that sending her to Florida to live with her mom might make her realize how much she had in North Carolina.

On January 20th, I came home from work and Dan told me that Emily was missing and had been for 2 weeks. When Shawn had not heard from Emily in awhile he tried to call her cellphone, when he didn't reach her on the cellphone, he called his e-wife, who only then informed him that she and Emily had a fight, she took away Emily's cellphone, and oh yeah, she left and I haven't seen her in 2 weeks. Not only did her mother not bother to call my brother in law, but at that point she hadn't even bothered to call the police and report her. Shawn ended up calling the police in Florida and reporting her, while he was in North Carolina. They went and talked to her friends, and a few of them said Emily told them she was going back to North Carolina. The last person to see her, was a boy that dropped her off at the mall. He asked her how she planned on getting back to N.C. and she told him she didn't have a plan she would just get a ride from who she could. I really don't know what she was thinking making that comment! Because she had told people she was going back to her dad's they had to treat her case as a run away originally, but when 3 weeks went by and there was still no sign of her, the asked Shawn for her dental records, because if something happened to her in another state that was the only way they would know.

Every single day from the first day we found out she was missing, I thought about her, and when I thought about her I would cry and pray that she was safe and that they would find her and bring her home. On February 7th, Shawn called and said they had a lead that she was in North Carolina staying with the boyfriend that got her sent to Florida in the first place. We were relieved, but at the same time still a bit hesitant to get our hopes up until it was confirmed. Yesterday when I got home from work I got a phone call from Shawn, he was crying and he told me that it wasn't her in N.C., the Police did a raid on the boyfriends house (unrelated to my missing niece), and even though they found a young girl there that was eerily similar looking to my niece, they confirmed that it was not her. He just kept crying and telling me something was wrong, he just KNEW something was wrong because she wouldn't do this to her sisters, she wouldn't go this long with getting a hold of someone, it just wasn't like her. And at that point I started bawling and thinking the worst, because he was right and the fact that he had given up hope made me give up some too.

I got off the phone and I cried and prayed, and then I got pissed because I truly felt like people were not doing enough to make sure she was safe. They weren't doing enough to make sure she was found. Why did the Police wait so long to treat her case like a missing person instead of a run away, hoping that she would turn up on her own. She is 15, she is still a child. Why was there no Amber Alert for those states she would have to go through? Maybe then someone would be looking out for her. Why was her mother not doing more? She should have been at the Police station everyday making sure they were checking things out, she should have been contacting the media, any media she could just to get Emily's picture and story out there. She should have been making, passing out, and hanging flyers every chance she could. She should have been organizing search parties/vigils, talking to friends, strangers, people at the mall where she was last seen! Something. Anything.

A few hours later, Shawn called Dan and told him they found her. She was safe. She was at home with her mother. And he had talked to her. We have yet to get the full story, like where has she been for the last month. But she did tell Shawn that she didn't think he loved or cared about her, which really breaks my heart to hear she thinks that. I'm just sooo happy that she is home and same and hopefully they will be able to work things out, and for heavens sake, get her AWAY from her mother! I'm sure that as I know more about it I will share. It's kind of funny that even today, knowing that she is safe, I still cry when I think about it.

Playing catch up in a rambling kind of way

It appears as though I have been slacking on here! So let's play a little bit of catch up and get current....

Dan went in for his Vasectomy, and he was such a trooper. He didn't even flinch, I, on the other hand, thought it would be a good idea to stay in the room and be a strong supportive wife....not really the case when you end up getting light headed and the Dr makes you lay down on the floor and put your feet up on a chair so you don't pass out! Dan thought it was hilarious, but I was so embarrassed, that's what I get though for wanting to stay in the room while the procedure was done. He healed up great and in no time flat.

We started bulking up on diapers, wipes and formula too. We figure we might as well buy a pack of diapers or a container of wipes or formula when we can since we will be using them a ton. Dan also started switching the two spare rooms around since what was our spare bedroom is now going to be the babies room, and the small storage room will be the spare bedroom.

We have our anatomy ultrasound scheduled for February 19th and I can't wait. I just love having the opportunity to see them little babies in there! Then I have my next appointment with my Dr on the 23rd. I think that I have been feeling them move some for the last week and half or so. It's a feeling that I just love! Other than that I have been feeling okay. Morning sickness is still coming and going from time to time, but on a good note I found Pizza that I can stand to eat! YAY!!

Oh, we ended up changing Makinsey's middle name to Lynne, all because Dan's sister said "I was going to name my daughter Elizabeth!" (*STOMPS FEET AND POUTS*)I was so pissed, First of all, we were using Elizabeth for a middle name and she wanted to use it for a first, I don't see the big deal. Second of all, she lives in Oregon, we live in Michigan and never see them. And third of all, they don't even know if they are going to have anymore kids, let alone have a GIRL that they can name Elizabeth! Whatever, I'm annoyed but I like Lynne too so it works out. I thought I was going to have to find another name to replace Paige too. Dan was talking one night and said something like "Page Lillian to the living room. Paging Lillian to the living room." For about a week after that I could not stop hearing that every time I thought of her name. It's pretty much passed now, and I'm pretty sure we are going to stick with Paige and Makinsey. I was thinking today whether we should assing each baby a name now or wait till they come out and see which one fits which name. When we had Taylor we knew her name before having her, and I remember right after she was born looking at her and thinking "Does the name Taylor really fit her?" I just think it might be fun to decide which one gets which name once we can see them!

Let's see, what else have I missed in the last couple of weeks? Dan's job cut their hours back to 4 days instead of 5, so he now works Monday night to Friday morning, rather than Sunday night to Friday morning. It really does suck, so we have been cutting back on things, and making adjustments to all our monthly bills, like cell phones and cable, to try and cut the cost. They are hoping that it only lasts for this month, and then hopefully it will be back to 5 days a week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that is actually the case!

I don't think that I wrote previously about the fact that our 15 year old niece was missing in Florida, but to make a long story short she was missing for a month and we got word Sunday that she may possibly be in North Carolina staying with a boyfriend that got her sent to Florida in the first place. I was so relieved to hear that, I can't even begin to explain! I cried and prayed every night and day that she would be found and that she was safe, so I am SOOO thankful. We are just waiting on confirmation that she is actually there.

Oh! I know! My mom ordered my stroller and car seats! I'm super excited about that. I think that she is probably going to wait and give them to me for my shower, which is fine with me! Speaking of shower, Jennifer and I went a couple weeks ago and started getting odds and ends for the party. Streamers, plates, silverware, napkins, table clothes....that sort of thing. And also started getting better ideas of what we wanted to do. I can't wait, it's so exciting! I went last weekend with my mom and we ended up getting 2 large Ivy plants, and 30 little potters, and breaking up the big plants into 30 small ones for the favors for my shower. I just love the idea that my guests will have favors that not only will remind them of my shower, but also that they can use. We thought about personalized candy of some sort, but you either eat them or try and save them, and then what? You have nothing. Or you could get those little nick nack type favors, but again, what do most people do with those? Throw them away eventually, or pack them away and forget about them. I figure this way, as long as they take care of them, they will have a nice little house plant for awhile to remind them of the shower. Now the real challenge is going to be for me to keep all these plants alive for the next 2 months, LOL! My husband is seriously doubting that I can do it, so that just means I REALLY have to do it just to prove him wrong!

Well I guess I have caught up enough for now. I should go and get this work done around here for the day!